MIDEAST NEWS DIGEST
LaRouches' UAE Tour Continues To Grab Headlines
Helga Zepp LaRouche's speech on a dialogue of civiliazations, that was give to the Zayed Center in Abu Dhabi in June, has been covered in all the Arab dailies in the United Arab Emirates. On Saturday, June 29, Al-Ittihad (published in Abu Dhabi), Al-Bayan (Dubai) and Khaleej (Asharjah), the three main daily newspapers in the United Arab Emirates, published an almost-full-page report on her presentation to the Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up. The dailies emphasized the nature of the presentation with headlines on the theme of the dialogue of cultures instead of clash of civilizations. The dailies referred to Helga LaRouche as the founder and president of the Schiller Institute, and also as the wife of "famous American economist and Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche." However, the dailies did not mention the conference on "Oil and Gas in International Politics" at which Zepp LaRouche made her presentation. It is reported, as in the ZCCF website, as a separate lecture, giving it a distinguished place among the other events organized by the center.
Sharon Pushing Broader Mideast War
A well-placed Egyptian source told EIW on June 30 that Ariel Sharon is focussing on Syria as the next target in his drive to blow up the Middle East and create the context for his "Jordan is Palestine" mass expulsion scheme. Sharon delivered a dossier to the Bush Administration, claiming Iran and Syria are massively building up Hezbollah's military capabilities inside Lebanon. In the context of the recent Martin Van Creveld piece on Sharon's mass expulsion strategy, the source said that Sharon is looking for the pretext to carry out a preemptive military strike against Syria, to knock out the country's missile and fighter plane capabilities. Sharon is playing on the fact that the Bush Administration is angry with Syrian President Bashar Assad, for his refusal to cooperate in any way in U.S. plans to oust Saddam Hussein. Syria maintains the only oil pipeline with Iraq that is not controlled under the humanitarian oil-for-food program. If Syria's military force can be knocked out, Sharon would be one big step closer to his mass-transfer option, the source warned.
Bush Rose Garden Speech 'Made in Israel'?
Israel played a major role in writing President Bush's Middle East policy speech, according to several U.S. sources. "Is Natan Sharansky Working in the White House Speechwriting Office?," queried the headline of an article by Dana Millbank, the Washington Post reporter, on July 1. Millbank is the reporter who "watches" the neo-con moles, and who exposed the William Kristol/Weekly Standard moles in the White House staff. This time, Millbank made an impressive line-by-line comparison of Sharansky's May 3 Jerusalem Post column with Bush's June 24 speech: such as specifying a "three-year period" to Palestinian statehood, specifying a "new" Palestinian leadership "unburdened...by terror" (Sharansky) or "free from terror" (Bush), and several other notable parallels. Sharansky would never call for a freeze on Israeli settlements, says Millbank, but notes that "Sharansky themes are tumbling from the lips of Bush officials." Also, Israelis had a role in the most critical section of the speech, where President Bush called for new leadership in the Palestinian Authority, according to Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post on June 30, who wrote an article entitled, "How Bush Decided To Cut Arafat Loose." Apparently, an Israeli Military Intelligence document linking Arafat with a payment to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, now on the State Department terrorist list, helped convince George W. Bush to call for Arafat's ouster in his June 24 Rose Garden speech. According to both the Washington Post and New York Times, it was Vice President Dick Cheney (who recently went through a self-brainwashing session with Bernard Lewis) who broke Colin Powell's resistance to dumping Arafat. But the crucial element was documents "proving" that Arafat signed off on giving a $20,000 payment "to a terrorist group that claimed credit for a suicide bombing." This document, says the Washington Post, was delivered by "an Israeli military attaché" to the National Security Council on June 20, "just 72 hours" before the Rose Garden speech. Without this document, it wasn't possible to break the impasse that Ariel Sharon encountered in Washington on June 10, when he demanded that Bush publicly denounce Arafat. On June 10, Powell was interviewed after Sharon's visit; at that time he said, "Arafat is the head of a government called the Palestinian Authority," and "the President [Bush] understands that." The top Jabotinskyite agent in the Administration, Richard Perle, crowed about how important the Bush speech was. "This was the largest break with the established view [on the Middle East] that I have ever seen," said Perle. With this victory in hand, Israeli intelligence moles in the Washington establishment are planting documents all over the Bush Administration and with the press, in their attempts to bring about a U.S.-backed war by Israel against Syria and Iran, to wipe out the Palestinian Authority, and start a confrontation with Saudi Arabia.
al-Qaeda-Hezbollah Links Alleged
A dossier allegedly showing the connections between the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda is circulating around Washington, according to an article by Douglas Farah in the Washington Post on July 30, and the Senate and House Intelligence Committees are now being briefed in closed session about the danger of Hezbollah using its infrastructure to rescue the "hobbled" al-Qaeda so that more attacks against the U.S. here and internationally can be launched. Recall that the Sharon government and its unofficial emissary Benjamin Netanyahu have been stressing the Hezbollah case as a means to justify Israeli attacks on Syria and Iran (if they cannot get the U.S. to do it for them). Senator Bob Graham (D-Fla) told the Washington Post that "Hezbollah is the A-team of terrorism." The Post says that the collaboration is occurring as "decentralized alliances ... to find common ground: crippling the United States, and forcing the U.S. military out of the Middle East and Israel out of Palestinian territory." The article recounts Hezbollah's role in the 1982 Beirut embassy, and the 1983 Beirut Marine barracks bombings.
Israeli Cabinet Minister Calls for Arafat's Liquidation
Just as Democratic Party Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. had said after President George W. Bush's June 24 Middle East policy speech, that speech made Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and others close to him targets for assassination. On July 5, the wire services AFP and AP stated that there were already plots afoot to assassinate Arafat. The head of the National Religious Party, Effi Eitam, who is a member of Sharon's Cabinet, called for Arafat to be placed on the list of those to be liquidated. "Arafat and his gang of murderers, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Israelis, deserve death," Eitam said. Immediately before joining the NRP and Sharon, Eitam was played up in the Jerusalem Post as being part of a group of IDF fanatic generals, who were preparing a "forced transfer" of Palestinians. Sharon's main spokesman, Ra'anan Gissin, said that "this is legitimate," because "Israel is a democracy." And Ha'aretz on July 4 reported that Eitam had called for the assassination of Marwan Barghouti, the jailed head of the Tanzim militia, who had been Secretary General of the Palestine Liberation Organization and was considered a potential successor to Arafat. Speaking in a synagogue, Eitam told the congregation that Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti, who is currently in an Israeli prison, should be "taken into a field and shot in the head." He also said that if it were up to him, Yasser Arafat "would be dead in 15 minutes, along with all of his gang." Asked to confirm these statements by Israel Radio, Eitam said: "...My message was clear ... Arafat is a murderer." He then stated that President George Bush would also support this. "Bush has said, 'Friends, get rid of this man and his gang, otherwise there will be no future for the region.' I have always said this, and I say it now. Barghouti should have been on a list of targetted killings." Meanwhile, IDF fanatic Israeli Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz, who is retiring after serving his four-year term, said July 5 in newspaper interviews and radio broadcasts that Arafat should be "expelled." Mofaz, who had been severely criticized and eventually muzzled for expressing such views, steps down on July 9, and feels free to shoot his mouth off. Responding to charges that he took political stands while in office, Mofaz told Israel radio that: "Those who agreed with me called it a professional opinion. Those who disagreed called it something else." Among the principal complainants had been Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who was said to have been "devastated" by President Bush's speech agreeing with Prime Minister Ariel "the Butcher" Sharon, that Arafat must be replaced. Mofaz is expected to enter politics in some fanatic rightwing party.
Israeli Concentration Camps Exposed in Ha'aretz
In a breach of the Geneva Convention's war crimes statutes, the Israelis have imprisoned up to 10,000 Palestinians in the equivalent of a concentration camp under hideous conditions, according to Ha'aretz of July 4. While in Goebbels-style fashion the Israelis refer to this as "administrative detention," which means no charges have been filed against them, the Palesinians are being held in deplorable conditions in the heat of the Negev Desert. Ha'aretz's Akiva Eldar publishes extensive quotes of the findings of Knesset member Zahava Gal-On, who visited the Ofer detention center in the environs of Jerusalem. Gal-On is a member of the pro-peace Meretz Party, manager of the Israeli human rights organization B'tzelem, and a member of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. She went on June 6 after the Israeli Attorney General refused to release the findings of a group of lawyers from the Attorney General's office, which she addressed in a letter that described the inhuman conditions in detail. In her letter, Gal-On reminded the Attorney General that the Israeli high court has ruled that administrative detention is applied only if the suspect poses an immediate danger, not to punish crimes committed in the past. "I wonder if all 1,000 prisoners in Ofer camp and the thousands of other detainees in administrative detention, all pose immediate future danger.... The large number of detainees in administrative detention raises suspicions that it has become a system for punishment without trial. It seems to me that even in the state of war we find ourselves, clear instructions must be given that either the detainees are put on trial or immediately freed."
Plans for Iraq War Published in New York Times...
A contingency plan has apparently been worked out for a three-pronged, unilateral U.S. attack upon Iraq, according to an article in the New York Times on July 5. The "military planning document calls for air, land and sea-based forces to attack Iraq from three directionsthe north, south, and westin a campaign to topple President Saddam Hussein, according to a person familiar with the document," writes the paper. The plan foresees "tens of thousands of marines and soldiers probably invading from Kuwait," as well as "hundreds of warplanes based in as many as eight countries, possibly including Turkey and Qatar," which "would unleash a huge air assault against thousands of targets, including airfields, roadways and fiber-optics communications sites." Finally, "Special operations forces or covert CIA operatives would strike at depots or laboratories storing or manufacturing Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to launch them." The paper says none of the countries involved have been "formally consulted," though Donald Rumsfeld visited many of them on his recent tour. The Times says the existence of the document shows plans are advanced. "Once a consensus is reached on the concept, the steps toward assembling a final war plan and, most importantly, the element of timing for ground deployments and commencement of an air war, represent the final sequencing that Mr. Bush will have to decide." Bush has been briefed twice by Gen. Tommy Franks, most recently on June 19, and now "brainstorming" is going on, according to a senior defense official cited. The document is called "CentCom Courses of Action," and was prepared by "planners at the Central Command in Tampa, Fla., according to the person familiar with the document." Neither Rumsfeld, nor Franks, nor the JCS has been briefed on this particular document, according to the article. The Times says it got a report on the document from someone who found it "insufficiently creative, and failed to incorporate fully the advances in tactics and technology that the military has made since the Persian Gulf war in 1991." The various options, of a land invasion or a coup, or the use of proxy forces, are mentioned. Then, the paper says, Administraiton officials have repeated that there are no imminent plans to atatck Iraq, and that most people are thinking in terms of next year. Then: "Nonetheless, there are several signs that the military is preparing for a major air campaign and land invasion." Among these signs cited are following: "Thousands of Marines from the First Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton, Calif., the Marine unit designated for the Gulf, have stepped up their mock assault drills, a Pentagon adviser said. The military is building up bases in several Persian Gulf states, including a major airfield in Qatar called Al Udeid. Thousands of American troops are already stationed in the region." Furthermore, "The Pentagon has said it has stepped up production of critical munitions. The Air Force is stockpiling weapons, ammunition and spare parts, like airplane engines, at depots in the United States and in the Middle East." The paper says the plan includes a detailed list of Iraqi targets, details on munitions available, on deployment times, etc., but does not mention coalition partners, casuality estimates, or plans for Saddam Hussein and his successor. The Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, according to AP of July 5, said of this leaked plan that: "We heard a lot of rubbish about these plans. These are wishes entertained by old colonialists and evil people."
...As Bush Administration Preps Diplomatic Excuse
According to the wire services AFP and AP on July 5, the U.S. appears to be preparing a "legitimate excuse" for unilateral action against Iraq (although some sources have reported to EIW that Prime Minister Sharon's Israeli Defense Forces might also be involved). This war cry escalated after UN Secretary General Kofi Annan concluded talks with Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri on readmitting WMD weapons inspectors to Iraq. The two spoke privately before the end of the session, and could not agree upon common language to characterize the talks. Unnamed diplomats said that they might continue in coming months in Europe, after Sabri has consulted with Baghdad. However, State Department spokesman Jo-Anne Prokopowcz said: "Iraqi representatives continue to raise issues aimed at preventing and delaying a focus on core obligation.... We see no basis or need for prolonged discussions of Iraq's obligations." And, U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Negroponte said that it should not take so long, as it requires merely a "yes" or "no." "There isn't much talk about if Iraq is truly prepared to accept unimpeded full-fledged inspections in their country," he told CNN, adding that: "I would be concerned if they sought to drag this out much further." Negroponte's position is similar to the views of Zbigniew Brzezinski, who at a recent CFR event with two other former National Security Advisers, said that "legitimacy" was needed for either an alliance or unilateral U.S. assault on Iraq. He said that the way to get "legtimacy" was to propose the reintroduction of weapons inspectors, and then go to war when Iraq refuses.
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